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Biography · Noble People · 92 / 100

Tu Youyou

born 1930 · Pharmaceutical chemist

Portrait of Tu Youyou
Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden · Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Bio

Chinese pharmaceutical chemist who led research that isolated artemisinin from sweet wormwood, drawing on classical Chinese medical texts and systematic screening. Artemisinin-based combination therapies became the standard treatment for malaria and are credited with saving millions of lives. She shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, becoming the first Chinese woman to receive a Nobel Prize in the sciences.